Blake's 7: Headhunter

“I was a perfect gentleman towards her!”

“That’s what bothered us.”

Oh dear. Another rubbish episode. That’ll be five out of six for the season so far. Not good. Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise; Roger Parkes wrote Children of Auron, after all…

For the second episode in a row, our heroes are desperately flailing around trying to recruit an eminent scientist in the hope he’ll be of some vague use. Vila and Tarrant are sent to collect this chap, Muller, while Avon uses his limitless charm to entertain his girlfriend, played by a disturbingly young Lynda Bellingham. But Muller calls Scorpio to say that someone’s on to him and he needs to be teleported up immediately.

There are clues that something’s up as soon as Vila and Tarrant teleport down. For a start, Muller is dressed quite absurdly, and his voice sounds a bit robotic which, as we will soon learn, a dead giveaway. Tarrant decides at the last minute to bring along a mysterious black box. Lucky he did, in the light of what happens.

Muller goes completely off his rocker once he finds the box is aboard, and sets about tussling with Tarrant in a highly unconvincing way. Plot convenience demands at this point that Vila is able to knock him out, possibly killing him, by a simple blow on the back, in spite of the superhuman strength he is later revealed to have.

Vila and Tarrant set off back to base with their black box and seemingly dead passenger, but things soon start to go wrong. Firstly Slave starts to become notably less obsequious, and then the destination of the ship is altered (Why? We never discover any reason for this to happen!). Finally, life support is withdrawn, meaning that Vila and Tarrant will gradually find their environment getting more and more airless and cold. Back at base, Orac suspects something is up, and suggests quarantine. Avon agrees. But ultimately, when it’s clear that the choice is to rescue them or let them die, Avon angrily refuses to abandon them. In fact, Paul Darrow’s decision to play both this scene and the episode’s final moments with real, passionate anger is pretty much the only interesting thing about this episode.

Orac starts acting a bit odd to Soolin (we still know sod all about her), though. Apparently all human life in the galaxy is doomed. Isn’t that nice? It seems he wants to be switched off until the “intruder” is destroyed. I suppose, in a halfway-decent episode, this would be in some way ominous.

We soon discover that not only is Muller alive but he’s happily walking around the premises (so when did he teleport down then?), and is in such a bad mood that he manages to rather unconvincingly kill his own girlfriend. He also seems to have superhuman strength, the power to control all electronic stuff, and the power to turn guns to stone for some reason.

The big revelation of the episode is very silly indeed; “Muller” is in fact a headless robot who has killed Muller so he can graft his head on to his robot body and pose as his creator, so he can make his way to Xenon, join forces with Orac, and enslave Orac. Oh, and the black box contains the robot’s head, which contains its metal superego, which is supposed to stop its metal id going out of control. Is this the silliest Blake’s 7 episode ever?

Our heroes manage to defeat their metal foe with the use of a dam and a bridge, and we get a very silly moment where Avon struggles to re-attach the head. With the threat over, Avon proposes to use the robot as a weapon, but Tarrant and Dayna proceed to blow it up behind its back. He throws a right wobbly here, which leads Orac- traditionally the voice of reason who speaks wisdom- to lambast his arrogance and hint that, perhaps, he may no longer be entirely sane or reliable…

Doctor Who: Trial of a Time Lord Parts Nine to Twelve: Terror of the Vervoids

Part Nine

“Let’s exercise the grey cells for once, shall we?”

The Doctor, still very upset at Peri’s death, is nevertheless forced to continue with the trial, and to show some evidence of his own. And this evidence is… from the future. His mind really must be addled by grief. And how does this work anyway? Can’t the Doctor think of anything that’s already happened to him throughout his entire life that will help his case? Why is evidence from the future even admissible? After all, by definition it can only be from a possible future, particularly as it seems at the moment that the Doctor is to be executed long before he ever gets to meet Mel or visit the Hyperion III.

So, it’s 2986, and said ship is travelling between what appear to be the colonial possession of Mogar and Earth- interestingly, given the fact that we appear to be in the same time period as The Mutants. We’re not in the same genre, though; there’s a murderer on board, and the spirit of Agatha Christie hangs in the air. No doubt this’ll be just as good as The Robots of Death, then.

Honor Blackman’s in it. The Doctor’s wearing a yellow cravat. Oh, and there’s a new companion, Mel, or rather there will be once the Doctor actually meets her. I’m enjoying this sort of timey-wimey stuff, much as the trial framing sequence is no longer making any sense. And I like Mel. And I like Bonnie Langford. There, I’ve said it.

Our scheduled broadcast of carrot juice and exercise bikes is interrupted by a mayday call, and our two TARDISeers are, er, embroiled in a web of intrigue. The Doctor and Mel have a great relationship, very tactile, with no serious bickering and a great chemistry. And Mel’s a likeable character who actually seems to enjoy travelling in the TARDIS, which comes as a huge relief. Because arguably no one else really has ever since Romana.

There’s an awful lot of aerobics in this story; it may be the 2980s, but it’s still the ‘80s. It’s all such fun though. I love the novel Professor Lasky’s reading…

We finish with some more apparent evidence that the Matrix has been tempted with. But on the plus side, Mel is definitely great- she can scream in the exact same key as the closing theme…

Part Ten

“The fellow may be a fool but he’s not a criminal.”

We get our first intimations here that there’s a dangerous alien plant species on the loose. And some more stuff happens with the murder mystery plot. But the main distinguishing feature of this episode is that rather cool-looking three dimensional Space Invaders clone the Mogarians are playing. Aside from its obvious coolness, it’s another example of how impressive the effects have been this season. Seldom before have we seen such casual brilliance.

We get a mention of the Black Hole of Tartarus, but we’re assured it’s perfectly safe. It’s definitely not going to be a threat at any point, then. The Mogarians discuss Earth’s plundering of their planet- bit of politics there- and there’s another murder. There’s some rather too heavily telegraphed Poirot stuff from the Doctor in the courtroom as he shows off about the Mogarian translator, but by now the murder mystery plot is bubbling nicely.

Mel screams in exactly the right key again.

Part Eleven

“Never mind the Just So Stories! That guard looks trigger happy to me!”

In a departure from the norm, Mel screams quite early in the episode this time. And narrowly escapes being murdered in true Perils of Pauline fashion. Meanwhile, the Vervoids appear properly and turn out to look fab- once again on the production side things are superb. And they get such naturalistic dialogue, too, with lines such as “We are doing splendidly!” which sound in no way bizarre coming from a talking plant.

Meanwhile the viewer gets confirmation that the Matrix’s pants are well and truly on fire as the Doctor is shown smashing the communications equipment. Much as this may not be anywhere near as well-written as Mindwarp, and the trial sequences make a lot less sense, I must admit that this time at least we know when the Matrix is lying and when it isn’t.

But the trial sequences make no sense at all here. The Investigator implies that the Doctor is guilty until proven innocent, the Valeyard is now trying to condemn the Doctor for things which haven’t actually happened yet and possibly never will, and the Investigator describes the Doctor’s “fair trial” as “an indulgence”. Everything tells us that this is just a show trial, with barely a pretence of justice, yet the Doctor seems to have no objection whatsoever to the Inquisitor’s conduct, and the script seems to assume that the audience are supposed to accept her as a legitimate authority figure, which is absurd.

Part Twelve

“The charge must now be genocide!”

Well, there’s a surprise- the ship’s headed straight for the Black Hole of Tarsarus. Who’d have thunk it? Technically, of course, there’s no danger at all as the Doctor and Mel could simply bundle everyone else in the TARDIS. In fact, that’s definitely what he would have done back when he was Peter Davison, although come to think of it that sort of thing more or less stopped with Planet of Fire.

Anyway, Rudge and the Mogarians slightly irritate our heroes with a fairly crappy hijack attempt. This is soon dealt with, but at least it manages to highlight the rather fantastic looking graphic effect on the screen on the bridge. The Doctor rather cleverly fingers Doland as the killer and turns the tables on him, and Lasky rather suddenly sees the error of her ways. Although she gets killed by the Vervoids anyway in the obligatory “But you can’t kill me! I’m your creator!” scene.

As a final nice touch, the Vervoids’ leaves turn autumnal before they crumble and die. Unfortunately things then start going all arbitrary in the courtroom…

The actual Vervoid story was rather good, I thought- nothing particularly clever, unlike last story, but it was a straightforward adventure done well and there’s nothing wrong with that. And like everything else in this season so far it looks great. It’s just a shame that the trial sequences, rather well-integrated until now, have started to unravel. Still, 4/5.

Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord Parts Five to Eight: Mindwarp

Part Five

“Then where will you be? Dead! No, worse than that. Poor!”

It’s all presented as the next episode, not a new story, but there’s no reprise, and Robert Holmes gives way to Philip Martin. It’s the planet Thoros Beta, the year 2379 and we’re about to see what was happening before the Doctor was taken out of time, or so we’re told. Certainly we see some highly impressive special effects and the most brilliantly realised alien planet yet seen. The pink sea and the ringed planet in the sky are completely unlike anything we’ve ever seen before and somehow manage to give this story a very different feel to usual from the beginning.

Of course, this being Philip Martin, we get a bit of metatextual stuff- the early trial scenes are essentially about directors’ choices of shots and decisions made in the editing! Still, seeing as I got a lot of enjoyment from this sort of thing in Vengeance on Varos I'm a bit disappointed by the relative lack of it in this story.

The Doctor and Peri are here to investigate a bit of naughty arms dealing, while Brian Blessed- in what is surprisingly his first appearance on Doctor Who- lies elsewhere on a table. This planet is ruled by the Mentors, led by a barely recognisable Christopher Ryan as Kiv, and the story is essentially based around mad scientist Crozier as he does loads of unethical experiments in a quest to cure Kiv’s headaches. Frankly, I’m not sure the people who design the headache pills I use are showing quite the same level of commitment.
Oh, and Sil’s back. Yay! I preferred the original costume, mind.

Part Six

“I have a special death reserved for him. He is a traitor known as the Doctor.”

The Doctor can’t seem to remember anything after Sil uses the machine on his brain, which makes the trial somewhat unfair from this point on. And it’s quite surprising that we only get one episode of the Doctor being unambiguously himself- I didn’t recall the stuff about unreliable narration starting so soon.

Brian Blessed, in a surprising departure from his usual type of part, plays Yrcanos as a shouty barbarian king. It’s good to see that his previous work in The Black Adder, Flash Gordon and Blake’s Seven hasn’t typecast him as quiet, nervous types. The character’s just a bit of comic relief, really, but in spite of being a bit of a prat he’s a nice chap really.

The Doctor’s initial betrayal of everyone, and his later betrayal of Peri, comes as a bit of a shock. In the wider context of the show, with the axe hanging over it and the earlier examples of The Twin Dilemma and Attack of the Cybermen, this probably isn’t a great idea. But in the context of this particular story it actually works quite well; with the framing device of the trial it’s allowed to be portrayed in a metatextual way with the reliability of the footage from the Matrix being open to question in spite of the Valeyard’s protestations that the Matrix cannot lie. And it could of course be, partially or wholly, just a clever plan by the Doctor, or a result of what Sil did to his brain earlier.

Be that as it may, the scenes with the Doctor interrogating Peri arguably cross a line. I hope this is the Matrix lying.

Towards the cliffhanger the Inquisitor appears to voice Philip Martin’s own frustrations with the trial scenes as she states that “I do grow tired of these continual interruptions…”

Part Seven

“Today, prudence shall be our watchword. Tomorrow, I shall soak the land in blood.”

Oddly, the Doctor is given a chance to pause the trial but insists on its continuing in spite of the blatant unfairness of the circumstances. By now there is a definite sense of doom surrounding the fate of Peri.

Kiv orders the death of all those who fail to save his life, causing Sil to become quite splendidly panicked. He calms down after the operation’s success, though, claiming that “I endeavour to maintain a certain continuity”, something with which the story is about to start having problems very soon. Still, there’s some good stuff. The scene in which the Doctor uses his knowledge of the future to help Sil make money is a nice touch, but it’s odd this is not immediately seized upon by the Valeyard.

Part Eight

“I thought it was somewhat gratuitous.”

There’s a great scene in which Peri explains love to Yrcanos while he explains his conception of the afterlife, where his destiny is “Why, to fight! What else!” Yrcanos is bonkers, of course, but he’s basically a decent and even innocent fellow underneath all the shouting, and Peri clearly likes him.

Things get even more confused as the Doctor seems to become one of the goodies again, rescuing Yrcanos and endeavouring to save Peri. Yrcanos soon stirs up some real trouble for the Mentors, and Kiv is eventually forced to abandon his business meeting with a pink Terileptil so that he can have his brain transferred into Peri’s body. The operation begins, while elsewhere Yrcanos’ rebellion gets under way- and it’s at this point that the Doctor is taken out of time and we rejoin the first episode of the season.

As a coda we get to see the horrifyingly effective sight of Kiv occupying the body of a bald Peri. Crozier has discovered a way to transplant any mind into any body; practically a form of immortality. To this the Time Lords have to intervene. Presumably if the Doctor hadn’t intervened, Crozier would have failed to save Kiv and been executed by the bodyguards. As it is, the Time Lords now use Yrcanos as an assassin to kill everyone.

So, Peri’s dead. And it’s the most shocking and affecting companion death yet. I certainly hope they don’t retcon it. That would be bad.

So, surprisingly given its reputation, I liked this one. There wasn’t quite as much humour in the metatextual stuff as there was in Martin’s previous effort, but he still managed to use the format of the trial to play some rather enjoyable games with the different layers of narrative, once again giving us a piece of television drama which is fundamentally about the fact that it’s television. I think the broad sweep of what was happening is more or less implied (the Matrix showed the Doctor being a little nastier during his time as a “turncoat” than he was in reality, but broadly speaking it was all his plan) and anyway, I’m sure it’ll all be explained away perfectly satisfactorily at the end of the season. 4/5.

Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord Parts One to Four: The Mysterious Planet

Part One

“I intend to adumbrate two typical instances from separate epistopic interfaces of the spectrum.”

It gives me a warm fuzzy glow, all the ambiguity about the story title. Reminds me of the early Hartnells. (Although, as we’ll see, this reminds me mainly of The Krotons.) And I for one will be taking neither side in the debate as I’m rather fond of shades of grey.

Anyway, the story starts with the most fantastic special effects sequence we have yet seen- something which looks like, yet cannot be, CGI. And while we’ll see nothing as mind-blowing as this for the rest of the four episodes, the production values seem pretty impressive to me, whatever may have been going on behind the scenes. 

The Doctor (now with a red cravat) is put on trial by a bunch of Time Lords in a fairly obvious metaphor for off-screen events- actually a brilliant idea in principle, and something which mostly works very well, at least for these four episodes. This trial is also the last time we’ll ever see many of what have become the essential trappings of Time Lord society- robes, Chancellery Guards and the like.

Lynda Bellingham and Michael Jayston are great as the Inquisitor and Valeyard respectively, which is quite a relief as the story absolutely needs them to be. The Doctor has, of course, been deposed as president, and in the interests of providing a more dramatic narrative he insists on defending himself in spite of having had no chance to do any preparation whatsoever, which is hardly fair. He has no real idea what he’s supposed to be defending himself against either but as the charges against him seem to constantly change arbitrarily throughout the story this hardly seems to matter.

That’s the framing sequence dealt with; the four-parter proper is another good ‘un from Robert Holmes, crammed with great ideas and great dialogue. We have the planet Ravolox in the far future, a planet suspiciously similar to Earth. We have a relationship between the Doctor and Peri where they’re back to being friends, a relief after certain recent stories where their relationship has been decidedly awkward to watch. And we have the fantastic Glitz and Dibber, the, ahem, Holmesian double act at its finest. Their dialogue is fab; the whole riff on the prison psychiatrist is a joy.

The whole script sparkles, with Holmes seemingly in a much lighter mood than he has seemed to be in of late. The postmodern wit is back (“Ancient life on Ravolox by Doctor-“), and so are the great ideas. The Doctor and Peri discover what seem to be the ruins of Marble Arch, and it seems that this could almost be Earth except it’s two million miles out of place, instantly a great concept. And it’s a nice touch that the whole thing is laid out like something that was once a tube station, and its inhabitants call it “Marb Station”. I’m enjoying this hugely, which is more than can be said for the Doctor: “Can’t we just have the edited highlights?”

On top of this we have the village, with Joan Sims as Katryca doing an impressive female version of Brian Blessed. I love her reaction to Glitz’s story- she’s clearly no fool. We also get Balazar and his books, another top comedy moment. And just when you think it’s peaked already, here’s Tom Chadbon…

Part Two

“These bars remind me of home.”

The early courtroom scenes in this episode suddenly make it very clear; Holmes is writing for the Tom Baker Doctor, isn’t he? In fact, it’s mere minutes after this thought occurs to me that the jelly babies come out. And I can’t think of any better way of writing for Colin Baker’ Doctor. Certainly the early wobbles over the character’s instability seem to be long gone by this point, although Colin’s performance seems to wobble a bit at the “I always like to do the unexpected” line.

The Immortal has two human underlings who, much as they remind me of David and Tony from The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, I shall henceforth refer to as Gonds for obvious reasons.

It’s another damn fine episode, with a bit more plot fed out to us amongst all the fun; Drathro and his “secrets” are to do with some “Sleepers” from Andromeda. Drathro’s power comes from a Black Light converter which relies on an aerial in Katryca’s village. An aerial which Dibber blows up, meaning that Marb station is soon going to blow up. Oops.

We also get another mention of Saward’s Speelsnapes, and some great character stuff. Drathro knows perfectly well that there’s rain falling outside and that the solar flares’ effects have been much exaggerated, but continues to ration water because that’s what the plan says, inflexible as any machine. A more sinister example of the same mindset, and the most disturbing aspect of the story, is the “culling” of “work units" above the set quota in spite of the fact this is completely unnecessary.

Part Three

“They are out of control, outside the plan.”

Holmes puts into the Inquisitor’s mouth some ironic commentary on recent off-screen-developments: “Valeyard, I would appreciate it if these brutal and repetitious scenes were kept to a minimum.” I’m tempted to see in this not only the obvious reference to criticism of the previous season but also a nod to the truncated length of this season, although sadly I think that may be a temptation too far. Still, more great dialogue.

It’s confirmed; Ravolox is Earth. And there’s now a race against time to avert a big bang. We get some postmodernism and political commentary too, though; the Matrix scenes are censored, something that can hardly fail to conjure up either recent criticism of the programme’s violence or government cover-ups. Mind you, Glitz and Dibber are blatantly talking about the Matrix.

Part Four

“Oh, the Black Light, yeah. We’ve got so much of that, sometimes we can hardly see.”

The Doctor is frustrated by his failure to persuade the solipsistic Drathro that, as he’s going to die anyway, he might as well allow everyone else to survive. But Drathro insists that “The work units exist only to serve me. Without me they would have no function.” This is a disturbingly accurate prediction of modern management practices…

Fortunately, Glitz’s “low cunning” proves to be more persuasive than the Doctor’s moral arguments and so catastrophe is averted. But still unsolved are three questions; why has Earth been moved two million years through space, and by whom? What are the “secrets” of the Sleepers? And what exactly was the point of the Valeyard showing us all that?

Well, that was great, Holmes at his best. And at this stage at least the trial scenes are fine. 5/5.